Text ReviewsVanguard Party: Culture, Politics, Critique, Photography, and Technologyhttp://www.vanguardparty.org/index.php/text-reviews
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 20:22:10 +0000Joomla! 1.5 - Open Source Content Managementen-gbSurvival Guide for Citizens in a Revolution, by Anonymoushttp://www.vanguardparty.org/index.php/text-reviews/138-survival-guide-for-citizens-in-a-revolution-anonymous
http://www.vanguardparty.org/index.php/text-reviews/138-survival-guide-for-citizens-in-a-revolution-anonymousSurvival Guide for Citizens in a Revolution arrives between the slick infographics wrought and circulated by teams of crack designers and the well-planned, collaborative 'zines of committed D.I.Y. community members. In the course of thirteen pages, it very often offers substantive copy punctuated by appropriate graphics that work together to accomplish a common purpose.

To its credit, it recognises it can only ever aspire to be a snapshot: It doesn't aspire to be as comprehensive as the Zombie Survival Guide and consequently avoids an essentializing trap that ignores the material circumstances would define a revolutionary moment: "This guide will give you some basic ideas and tips for how you and your friends/neighbors/family can stay safe in the violent turmoil around you. It is not a ready-made recipe, but it contains survival tactics and strategies" (02).

Some tactics and strategies seem like common sense - at least, when reflected upon in relatively pacific moments. Others are built from the wisdom of past experiences: "Band together into small squads of known friends" is encouraged because of what "was seen at the G20 summit in Canada (Watch for pieces of police uniforms like police shoes...)"

Some of it is strikingly thoughtful: what to do if you witness attrocities; how to use dial-up; the importance of carrying coins; negotiating violent crowds; maximizing safety when conflict in unavoidable.

It's an utterly compelling manual that seems no less effective for having been intended for a broad array of circumstances.

Unfortunately, it's so well organized, written, and edited, in fact, that the overriding thought isn't "where do I keep this for future reference," but instead who is this Anonymous and how is she so successful at everything she does?

It's serious stuff for serious times. But before referring to additional tools and offering helpful checklists, it recognizes its audience:

"And Whatever Happens: Stay Together and Watch Out for Zombies"

Click the image for the PDF.

]]>licheghoulmann@gmail.com (krusty)Text ReviewsFri, 27 May 2011 16:02:22 +0000Lessig, Lawrence. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economyhttp://www.vanguardparty.org/index.php/text-reviews/125-lessig-lawrence-remix-making-art-and-commerce-thrive-in-the-hybrid-economy
http://www.vanguardparty.org/index.php/text-reviews/125-lessig-lawrence-remix-making-art-and-commerce-thrive-in-the-hybrid-economyLessig predicates his work on the idea that the US is waging a metaphorical copyright war. And by “copyright war” Lessig very clearly refers to the war waged by multimedia multinationals against would be “pirates.” Like other metaphorical wars, like the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on gang activity, he urges us to weigh the aims of the war with other considerations – the win-ability of the war along with its unintended costs and consequences. Lessig looks to his kids and realizes that the copyright wars would render them and a whole generation criminal, would continue to stifle the most creative artists, and have other unacceptable collateral damage. Lessig makes clear that he is not a copyright opponent, but rather seeks a lasting peace in this unwinnable war. The solution for Lessig is in a right-minded copyright reform that takes into account the technologies of the 21st century, rather than the creative, technical, and distribution methods of the mid-twentieth century. Professor Lessig spins case law into supportive anecdotes that render his argument at once compelling and clear.

Lessig casts Remix as Free Culture reflected upon in tranquility. He’s reconciled himself with the fact that the political manifests carried in Free Culture are impossible as the copyright war has developed, and seeks instead a case for peace and a plea for the creativity copyright was intended to provoke. I dig that Lessig revisits his argument and makes compromises in the name of peace, with his eyes clearly focused on his children’s generation and how they’re to be regarded – as criminals or as artists.

It is always a pleasure reading Lessig – even when the book is cagerorized under business > economics. Lessig calls out the flurry of copyright infringement cases and the DMCA as another metaphorical war fought by a nation that, because of its particular history, romanticizes war – even when it’s against its own citizens.

McKenzie Wark, author of the nigh (ironically) impenetrable but maniacally compellingHacker Manifesto, applies high theory to come to an understanding of culture through gaming. The style, tone, and elusiveness of the prose is so spot on that it might be read by others as a satire of Gramsci and the pop culture studies that followed. However, Wark makes a very serious and well-manicured case for his argument.

Rather than theorizing games, as a host of other books do, Wark uses games to theorize and hypothesize about culture – the subject, he suggests, must be understood in terms of the gamer as we negotiate the quests and tasks of life in the age of late capitalism (mind, that’s obscene reduction of Wark’s thesis). Indeed, one alternative is to look at this as a satire of high theory; another is to see this as someone finally getting right what so many tried to do in the mid-nineties (including me) by theorizing hypertext. Wark is every bit as challenging and abstruse as Lacan or Derrida – and equally rewarding.

]]>licheghoulmann@gmail.com (RIk Goldman)Text ReviewsTue, 17 May 2011 10:43:12 +0000LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell (3rd edition)http://www.vanguardparty.org/index.php/text-reviews/120-lpi-linux-certification-in-a-nutshell-3rd-edition
http://www.vanguardparty.org/index.php/text-reviews/120-lpi-linux-certification-in-a-nutshell-3rd-editionIn anecdotes, at least, LPI Linux Certification is more intensive and severe than Linux+ certification. This book is a clear testament to those anecdotes' claims. As a result, it is no mere certification guide, but rather a comprehensive reference guide to GNU/Linux operating systems, regardless of distribution or brand. It covers everything from hardware architecture to system configuration, to scripting and automating, and to server administration: ftp and web services are covered – as are email services, which are traditionally the most difficult services to configure and maintain. (Email is a trusting service, so security measures are necessary to ensure that the service isn't exploited.)

LPI Linux Certification covers security as comprehensively as it treats other domains. Despite its scope, the book still covers the material “in a nutshell”: where the Linux+ guides assume the reader is coming from a position of ignorance and seeking enlightenment from a book, this one assumes the reader is already a successful Linux professional. No time is spent patronizing the reader with explanations or taking time out to celebrate the Linux legacy. As a result this 3rd edition is lean and pithy. The reference apparatuses demonstrate that this book was intended to be a comprehensive reference guide rather than a set of lessons and exercises to put the reader on the path to enlightenment.

This book is recommended to any Linux user precisely because it's such an utterly usable and and reliable reference guide. It is an excellent supplement to the documentation that's traditionally installed with the operating system. Once having read it, users will likely find themselves referring to the text on at least a weekly basis.

While I've certainly made progress toward achieving Linux+ certification, I'm not there yet. When I see this publication, I am humbled by the monolithic certainty one must have to earn LPI certification. It's somewhat discouraging to realize just how thoroughly some people know the GNU/Linux family of operating systems.

This is a 2010 compilation of essays reprinted from Trouble and Strife, a ‘zine of Great Britain published between 1983-2002 that brands itself as a zine of “Radical Feminism” - as it was known by the “current wave of feminism” in 1983. Finding this was in the Creative Commons meant disrupting my intended reading queue on comparably mundane issues; I had so many questions. In my education, we spoke not of feminism, but of feminisms. We read critiques by academics, such as bell hooks and Spivak, in their ivory towers, that asserted that earlier waves of feminism essentialized and universalized femininity, and in doing so fundamentally ignored the real experiences of women in their cultures facing fundamentally different political situations than the European feminists whose voices had been heard and in cases celebrated. We learned to understand feminisms and identity politics as a consequence of a more fundamental oppression: class. And finally, we spoke in terms of multiple oppressions, and spoke of the difficult identity politics of the African-American lesbian woman. So when I saw this a few nights ago, I was keen to read how feminism represented itself before the academy and critical theory took hold of it.

The anthology begins with two manifestos – one from the first issue in 1983, and one from 1993 seeking to reassert and clarify positions in light of new political developments. My questions are clearly addressed in both manifestos. In 1983, the political struggle between men and women is unwaveringly declared universal – and the collective makes the cause clear: “We consider men oppress women because they benefit from doing so.” The collective is speaking explicitly of all men’s oppression of all women (yea, even men at the bottom of the social hierarchy.) There is a statement at the end of this first manifesto about the cultural diversity of collective contributing to and publishing Trouble and Strife.

The 1993 manifesto is a result of changes in the political landscape (such things as how people protest and communicate, changes in how women come into first contact with feminism, etc. In this manifesto, the critiques by subsequent waves of feminism are implied. The manifesto addresses multiple oppressions to insist that sexism is not a function of the woman’s accumulation of capital (the Marxist approach), is not a function of disability, nor a function of sexual preference. If there are multiple oppressions, patriarchal domination is a priori foundational since sex is not contingent on, for example, class or disability. By 1993, Trouble and Strife should be addressing concerns that “radical feminism” is othering and contributing to the oppression of women in, for example, developing nations or impoverished inner city regions. However, this manifesto still doesn’t address the problem of universalizing and essentializing women (and men, by the way). The real joy promised to be in the content of the essays, where I could find examples by writers in the roots of the grass, rather than ivory towers.

The 1999 essay “Difference is not All That Counts” addresses a kind of gordian knot for the gender studies field: that is, what to do about “difference?” If we make a declaration differentiating women from men on any biological (and therefore psychological) basis, we risk essentializing. As a constructionist (and incidentally a constructivist), I’m looking for a way to say that any difference is constructed by the subject, by the culture, or by the beholder. (Negotiating these poles is tough as we learn more and more from brain imaging; if I were in grad school now, I’d probably know how identity politics has responded to imaging technology.) In this essay, Purna Sen draws from her experience working with Asian women in the UK and the Indian subcontinent to ultimately conclude that we should advocate for the recognition of difference, but struggle against the privileging of difference. In making her case, Sen does acknowledge diversity must be accounted for by a successful feminist theory. Regardless, she wiggles her way out of the problem by simply concluding that our commonalities should provide the framework for our work together. Differences are valued in this essay because we can learn a diversity of resistance strategies from one another. How she manages to recognize that different cultural politics lead to different forms of resistance, without acknowledging that there is no universal women’s experience is beyond my understanding.

But as Sen’s essay demonstrates, this is a fantastic anthology for understanding the foundations of contemporary feminisms.

Resources

]]>licheghoulmann@gmail.com (rik goldman)Text ReviewsThu, 12 May 2011 04:13:53 +0000The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musing on Linux and Open Sourcehttp://www.vanguardparty.org/index.php/text-reviews/78-the-cathedral-and-the-bazaar-musing-on-linux-and-open-source-by-eric-sraymond
http://www.vanguardparty.org/index.php/text-reviews/78-the-cathedral-and-the-bazaar-musing-on-linux-and-open-source-by-eric-sraymondThe Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musing on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary by Eric S. Raymond (Review)

Raymond’s titular essay seeks - and succeeds – to provide a complete anthropology of the open-source software movement from which the Linux kernel emerged. The other essays in the anthology are elaborations on points touched on in “The Cathedral and the Bazaar.” Raymond explores how two open-source projects, Linux and fetchmail, succeeded despite all the contemporary assumptions about the process of software development that would have anticipated their failure. Raymond is particularly concerned about the “laws” expressed in the engineering classic The Mythical Man-Hour: e.g. adding developers to an overdue project delays the project by the square of the linear increase in developers. This law, Raymond demonstrates, applies to the closed-source development model – which he refers to as the cathedral model, since elites understand the full picture and the laborers are given specific tasks to complete without a holistic view of the project. Open source, the bazaar model, succeeds in spite of these laws because of the character of open-source culture; for example, he cites “Linus’ Law” - given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. Raymond, in fact, provides a series of these truisms that he feels captures the open-source spirit that produced Linux and fetchmail, and which he believes are fundamental to the success of open-source projects. Interestingly, he relies quite heavily on statements about labor by the turn-of -the century anarchist Peter Kropotkin; however, he concedes with some discomfort, that there is a characteristic essential to the core developers (leaders) of an open-source project: communications and charisma. Programming acumen is quite notably not one of those essential characteristics.

The Cathedral and the Bazaar is essential reading for anyone working to understand how open-source projects can enjoy the success they’ve had despite lacking the characteristics we’ve come to assume are critical to the success of a project with immense complexity. Important lessons about the value of cooperation over competition abound in Raymond.

As Raymond describes it, the open-source model should be a boon beyond the projects of developers and engineers. Sure enough, other endeavors are following this model: for example, the Open-MIT courses are a perfect manifestation of Raymond’s open-source community at work.

]]>licheghoulmann@gmail.com (Rik Goldman)Text ReviewsTue, 10 May 2011 22:05:21 +0000Head First PHP and MySQL: Beighley and Morrisonhttp://www.vanguardparty.org/index.php/text-reviews/74-head-first-php-and-mysql-beighley-and-morrison
http://www.vanguardparty.org/index.php/text-reviews/74-head-first-php-and-mysql-beighley-and-morrisonHead First PHP and MySQL is part of O'Reilly's Head First brand. On their own, these books appear as professional as 'zines and as condescending as the For Dummies. Pages appear as cutups composed of photos with cartoon bubbles, screenshots with zany arrows, and a hodge-podge of typefaces – including one resembling the never-acceptable comic sans. However, when contrasted with the publisher's other brands, canonical, authoritative tomes referred to by professionals and aspiring professionals throughout the IT industries, the Head First series, including Head First PHP & MySQL really comes off as nothing short of a failed parody taking aim at the severity of O'Reilly's own assets. At best it's a tireless visual assault; at worst it's a cunning saboteur of the aspiring professional.

PHP, an open-source programming language, and MySQL, an open-source database are best mates; together, they've taken the platform-specific applications of the 90s and created a way to retrieve, store, process, and report on data through a platform-agnostic web browser. The pair made the way for web 2.0 and have not become outmoded in the roughly 16-years they've been colleagues. The approach of this book is to teach the two complementary technologies side by side – exercising the reader's scripting ability by applying it directly to database operations. This approach should succeed, despite its radical failure. By focusing on PHP's cunning interactions with MySQL, the reader is left with no foundation in the fundamental language constructs that define PHP. Likewise, database fundamentals like the five normal forms of database theory, are completely left out, except where they can be expressed in terms of PHP. So, after completing the book, the reader should be able to make a simple web form to submit data to a flat database, and construct a rather similar form to query the database and list the results in the browser. But despite 500+ pages of cartoons so cunning you could pin a tail on them and call them badger, the reader will not be able to embark on the projects she imagined herself doing based on the tacit promises made by the book's promotional copy and it's “brain-friendly” format.

This is the text associated with an introduction to PHP course (provided, incidentally, by O'Reilly School of Technology). Because the book only offers insights into PHP as it relates to MySQL, the text is not even remotely useful to assigned research or the completion of assessments. It's an easy read, and it answers some really fundamental questions a curious beginner probably should start with; but one should not read it with the assumption that with the conclusion one will be able to produce custom web-based applications.

I dig the attempt at a cut-up DIY 'zine-like layout, but the professional results make it a failed attempt at that appealing aesthetic. On the cover, it calls itself a “Brain Friendly Guide,” and one would think the copious illustrations would be an asset. But the message received goes something like this: “you don't know anything and we're professionals; so here are some blocks with letters on them; you can stack them in all kinds of ways. Never you mind about the letters. Those are for professionals.”